POETRY

Poetry is a room
With a single window.
When the morning sun
Pounces on my eyes,
I keep the light saved
In my poor slow heart,
And hope to call it my art.

On a moonless night,
Playful shadows remain hidden
In my small room,
In the corners covered with cobwebs.
I gaze into the pitch dark
Night, taking in the scanty stars.
The stars in the black sky
Become words of poetry.

When the gibbous moon
Tiptoes into my small room,
I bring out the shadows,
And mix them with
My dream of meadows
On a bright sunny day.
I use the grey cobwebs
To lace the moonbeam
That falls on the floor;
An alchemy to find fairy
Words for my poetry.

The sunlight and the shadows,
The moonbeam and the meadows
Mingle in the cold cauldron
Of my heart, giving off the
Fragrance of withered roses;
Poetry makes me a waif wanton,
A room within a room,
Shadows chasing each other
Laughing, crying, lying prone
To smell the earth's loneliness.
A poet's privilege: laughing alone.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”